The Application Switcher, Ring Switcher, and Shift Switcher allow you to flip between your windows using your keyboard, with some nice 3D effects. Note that these are three completely separate plugins which essentially perform the same functionality; hence, these three plugins have been placed together on this page.

Application Switcher

The Application Switcher provides the same functionality as the traditional GNOME and KDE <Alt>Tab switcher, but uses live window thumbnails to show its previews.

Usage

You can use the Application Switcher to switch between windows of different contexts with different keybindings.

To flip to the next window, press <Alt>Tab

To flip to the previous window, press <Shift><Alt>Tab

To flip to the next window in all workspaces, press <Ctrl><Alt>Tab

To flip to the previous window in all workspaces, press <Shift><Ctrl><Alt>Tab

Finally, you can choose whether to overlay an icon on the window's thumbnail. If you enable the Show minimized option, the switcher will show the minimized application's icon in the list.

Appearance

You can also edit a few aesthetic details, such as the speed at which the switcher flips between windows, and how much the desktop zooms out. You can also configure the following attributes for inactive windows in the list:

Ring Switcher

The Ring Switcher plugin allows you to flip through your windows in a ring. This has advantages over the normal switcher as you can see more windows at once.

This plugin requires the Text plugin to be enabled if you want to draw text.

Usage

The keybindings are essentially the same as the normal Application Switcher plugin, except that <Alt> is replaced with <Super>

To flip to the next window, press <Super>Tab

To flip to the previous window, press <Shift><Super>Tab

To flip to the next window in all workspaces, press <Ctrl><Super>Tab

To flip to the previous window in all workspaces, press <Shift><Ctrl><Super>Tab

Because the Ring Switcher is based on the Scale plugin, you can also select windows with the mouse. This can be enabled in CCSM via Ring Switcher plugin -> Misc Options tab -> Mouse Selection.

You can also choose to overlay an icon on the window thumbnails, or to show icons for minimized windows in the list.

Appearance

The Ring Switcher also provides a number of appearance options. You can change the following:

The speed of the switcher flip animation

Inactive window opacity

How much darker windows get the 'further away' they are

How much smaller windows get the 'further away' they are

How big the thumbnails are in Width / Height

How much of the screen the ring spans.

Text

Finally, you can choose whether to show the title of the selected window. To do this, make sure that the Text plugin is enabled, and you can change things like the font size and the text placement on the screen.